A product analytics expert walks into a bar.
He orders a beer and says: "I'd like to see your engagement rates on this beverage. Does it increase customer dwell time, or are we just boosting the bathroom visit metrics?"
Product analytics is one of the key things every business should have in their toolbox.
We got into this space without a great structure. We only wanted to understand what the users do with the products we build.
If we add a new CTA, does anyone even click it? And if they do, is this extra traffic, or are we cannibalizing from another place? And if we launch a new feature, how many users would know about it within their organic journey?
These are the questions that can help see if real value is being created or not.
The first step is tracking events. The user opens the page, clicks a button, or uses some interactive component. All that we can record using simple Javascript. While intimidating at first, teams should build event tracking right into the features.
We have all the tools for that, and from the tech perspective, there is no limit. We can use a tool like GA4 to collect everything the users do. For simple cases, UI is enough. But with an export of everything to BigQuery, it's possible to build complex funnels. And then visualize them and create interactive Looker Studio dashboards for the marketers.
But the actual final topic is interpretation. Are we able to make data-backed decisions from the reports we are using? Or does it only make us feel good?
We need to figure out, what questions are we actually trying to answer. And from that, we can decide what to measure, and what the customers need to achieve.
